Illness sends 22 at Coronado church to hospital

CORONADO 
Twenty-two people, most of them schoolchildren, who were sickened at a church Friday morning were taken to hospitals to be checked for carbon monoxide poisoning after initial tests indicated possible exposure to the colorless, odorless gas.

No evidence of carbon monoxide was found during an inspection of the church and the adjacent school, said Coronado Fire Division Chief Ed Hadfield. The inspection, which included the church furnace, was conducted by a county hazardous materials team and a San Diego Gas & Electric Co. crew, he said.

“There were no high levels of anything abnormal,” Hadfield said.

The incident began shortly after 9 a.m. when two children fainted and a third felt ill during a morning Mass attended by about 300 people inside Sacred Heart Catholic Church at C Avenue and Seventh Street.

Friday was the last day of school for students at Sacred Heart, which has classes for kindergarten through eighth grade.

The Rev. Michael Murphy said he was in the middle of the Mass marking the end of the school year when two students, who were sitting in a pew in the middle of the church, fainted. Others then began reporting headaches, nausea and weakness.

The church was evacuated and paramedics were called.

Coronado Fire Chief E. John Traylor said the patients had high levels of carbon monoxide in their system. Seventeen children and five adults were taken to three hospitals.

Eighteen of the patients – 16 children and two adults – were taken to UCSD Medical Center, said hospital spokeswoman Kim Edwards. None of the 18 tested positive for carbon monoxide poisoning, Edwards said.

One adult and one child were taken to Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, and neither tested positive for carbon monoxide poisoning, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Two others were taken to Sharp Grossmont Hospital. A spokesperson did not return calls about those patients.

A UCSD Medical Center doctor who treated the majority of the patients said he believed the initial readings taken by emergency personnel at the church may have been incorrect, Edwards said.

Hadfield said that the monitor used by paramedics in the field is placed on a patient's finger and checks levels of carbon monoxide in the blood. Any reading above 0 is considered high enough to warrant transport to a hospital, particularly in children. The level of one patient was a 12, which is “pretty significant,” he said.

“Our job is to stabilize the patients and transport to the hospital for higher medical care,” Hadfield said.

At the hospital, “they've got a higher level of testing than we do in the field,” he said.

Hadfield said that with a continuing flow of oxygen, carbon monoxide levels will diminish over time.